A Long Holiday Week-end

 "I have learned that to be with

those I like is enough."

Walt Whitman

 

Labor Day week-end.  And what a enjoyable weekend it has been filled with pleasant weather, bicycles, and friends.  Friday the skies are blue and the sunshine still warming as Jon and I ride out of  Madison for a bike/picnic ride.  My newer bike is in the shop as I wore a tooth off my middle chain ring, so I am on the old aluminum Trek, entry level, that I rode 2007 for PBP.  The lights I used there are on it.  Lloyd put them on a bit before he passed  as I used the bike for commuting.  And so they remain on.  They have the older hub generator, the kind that has no battery so your lights go out if you are pedaling slowly or stop pedaling.  The bulbs are incandescent and you have to be careful not to touch them with your fingers when they burn out as the oil from your hand will overheat them and cause them to fail.  It gives my bike quite the retro look. Of course, the drag of the generator makes it harder to pedal, but it's all good.   Jon always rides an older bicycle.  So perhaps today we match.

Prior to the ride, when I attempt to attach my carradice holder, the one I have to have as my bike is so small the carridice rubs the wheel without one, I find I have to change saddles to accommodate it. I had forgotten that I rode a much different saddle at PBP.  Since I grease my seat tub yearly to prevent potential welding, however, it is not a chore.  While I mark each seat tube so that I don't have to adjust height, I do have to adjust it on a different bike.  When I give it the first whirl, my knees come to my chin when pedaling. But eventually I get it where it is about right.  I have made fresh veggie and pasta kabobs, the kind that don't  need to be cooked, and I have goat cheese and crackers.  Jon is bringing the main course which turns out to be a vegetarian lasagna.  So we have a feast complete with a glass or two of red wine.  

Jon tells me there is only the one main climb which is good with the extra weight and the drag of the hub generator, but I have no trouble with it, at least at the pace I am riding.  We ride to Hardy Lake and sit on the spillway, chatting and sharing a meal.  It doesn't get much better than this.  It is nice just to relax and not hurry, to share food and thoughts and conversation, to laugh, to have new thoughts thrown my way.  I do think of how Lloyd and I would come to the lake with the boat after he got home from work to water ski occasionally, but it is  a happy memory.  Time has eased the pain.  I miss him, but I suppose I have accepted it is how things are and can smile, grateful that we had our time together.  And here I am making a new, good memory with someone different.  I am glad I am finally open to that.  

After our feast, we head back toward Madison.  On the way, Jon decides to show me a historical college, Eleutherian College.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleutherian_College 

 I don't know if he suspects how much I will appreciate this side trip or not, but I find it very interesting despite the fact it is a work in progress.  Indeed, they are working on the roof during our visit and only the main floor is open.  We talk briefly about how sad it is that yet today we are engrossed in the same problem despite the passage of time, just to a different degree. Do we, as humans, ever really change?  Jon tells me how their bike club at one time held a fund raising ride for the college restoration.  Nice idea. 

I love the look of the stone, the mortar that holds it firmly in place, the window sills.  Such artistry in the construction. We walk behind the building to where I suspect they had a garden to meet their food needs and Jon confirms that he has heard they grew their own food.  It is lovely and I am so glad we took the time to stop.  If I were alone, I would be making up tales in my mind about those who came here seeking an education, women who were discouraged from learning, slaves who were seeking freedom and to better themselves.  From what I understand, the area was also part of the Underground Railroad.  Interesting!  Would I have had the guts to risk ruination to help others or would I have been a coward, believing but afraid to do what needed to be done?  Would I have even believed in equality and emancipation?  Sometimes I wonder who I would have been had I been raised in a different time, or with a different color skin, or with a different gender.  A friend once told me another rider had said she believes I want to be a man.  As I told him, I don't, but I do envy the freedoms and opportunities  that men had/have that were not given to me because of my gender.  Briefly Adrienne Rich's words come to mind:

Bemused by gallantry, we hear
our mediocrities over-praised,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intuition,
every lapse forgiven, our crime
only to cast too bold a shadow
or smash the mold straight off.

 

Perhaps she is right.

 

Saturday is Mike Crawford's ride starting at Clear Creek Park in Shelbyville.  On my way to the start, I reminisce as this was where I completed my first triathlon, scared but excited, accompanied by my husband for courage.  It was only a sprint triathlon, but it was something new, and if I remember correctly, it was in February and cold.  The swim was a pool swim where everyone was seeded according to swim times they had presented.  But my dreaming is interrupted by arrival.  Mike and Steve Rice are there.  Steve thought the ride started a half hour before it did.  

While I had intended to ride at the back, Dave and Steve call to me when they leave and so I leave with them.   While we used to all ride together regularly, it has been a long time since we have all ridden together and I have others that I regularly ride with now.  My life has moved on as has theirs.  I know, however, that my new friends will forgive my riding off.  

The hilliness of the course is mitigated by catching up a bit and talking and laughing about memories.  It is fun to tease and be teased.  Teasing requires a certain level of comfort with the other person, the assurance that they will not be offended by what one says, that they will feel the underlying fondness or that they have the ability to appreciate their flaws or idiosyncrasies.  It was an integral part of our past friendship.  Everyone seems comfortable with it.   I call Steve a "wuss" for not putting on his traditional Pam century on Derby Day.  He teases me right back. 

And then there is the ride I put on Sunday  in the knobs of Southern Indiana.  There is a relatively large turnout for the ride, most of them much faster riders than I.  I breath a sigh of relief seeing a few of the people I normally ride with as I  hoped for some companionship and for a day when I was not riding with my tongue hanging to the ground.  The ride does, after all, start with the long climb up Spikert Knob. And I get my wish.  I spend the day riding and chatting with John, a person who I find to be funny, interesting, and agreeable.  Unfortunately for John, on this ride, while climbing one of the hills, an insect decides  his nostril looks inviting.  He blew it out and luckily it could not or did not sting, but it still was a shocker. Paul, Mike M. and Amelia are not too far ahead and Amelia has already told me that she will join me for curbside pizza afterward.  

Mike declines the invite, but John, Amelia, Paul, and I spend a few more moments enjoying each other's company over pizza.  John kindly insists on treating.  The pizza is so filling that I only need a small snack for dinner.  It was good pizza, but it was made better by the company.  I am so lucky to have such friends and to have my health and a bicycle.  Like Whitman, being with people I like is enough.  And I have had time with lots of people I like this holiday week-end.  I am truly blessed.